A renewed concept of rural development has been introduced in several European countries since about 1960. This has been introduced also in Japan since about 1970. Among those industrial countries, West Germany and Japan have similarities: West Germany has the Land Consolidation Act (Flurbere-inigungsgesetz) as basic legislation for local level undertakings, while Japan has the Land Improvement Law.In fact, the legal precedent of the Land Improvement Law was adapted from the German law. Another similarity is the hierarchical structure for regional development and planning in accordance with the administrative structure.
The objective of this paper is to compare and discuss the legislative and other frameworks for rural development in these two countries. The first and most important consideration is the effect of the legislation on reforming rural areas.The second is the structure of development and planning.Ansl the final consideration is the integration or coordination function of the recent rural development.
In West Germany, rural development projects must be initiated by the order of public authorities. Therefore, the governmental control is relatively strong.Non-agricultural objectives are included in the project agenda as well as agricultural objectives. The projects are in many cases well coordinated with other public infrastructural improvement projects.
Japanese land improvement projects, on the other hand, must be based on the voluntary application by farmers. The objective is restricted to agricultural matters only, and the undertakings of such projects are often poorly coordinated with other public undertakings.
The hierarchy and the organization for development and planning is more systematically structured in West Germany effectively integrated with other planning at the local level. The objective of overall development for rural communities is clearer in West Germany than in Japan.
In terms of the effect of rural development on improving and restructuring rural areas, the German system is superior to the Japanese one. However, the restrictive and authoritative nature of the German procedure could be counted as a drawback.

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The purpose of this research is to examine the size of “han” (numbers of house and extent of“han”), which constitutes a fundamental organization in rural communities, and to collect basic ma-terials of spacial planning in rural settlements.
This research data is acquired in 27 settlements in 6 prefectures, using field surveys, consisting of a questionnaire, interviews, a sign-map and observation methods.
The main results are as follows:
1. The organization of “han” reflects geographical features and frame of roads, but in one settlement, “hans” tend to be similar to each other.
2. Changes in our society, relationship of regions, human relations, features of groups and differential time of settlements cause transformations of “han”.
3. The size of “han” at present is 60-320 meters in length and consists of 4-11 houses.
4. Taking into account neighbourhood domain and neighbourhood association, the size of partial organization is usually 250 meters and in special cases the size is 460 meters, and consists of 10 houses, which is a guideline of spacial palnning in rural settlements.

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This is the first of three articles on aged returnees. Aged returnees are defined as those who are farm-householders or their spouses and re-establish their position in the community after they leave their previous work outside farming. They have received much attention these days as many of them take up farming, causing the ageing of the local agricultural labour force, and also as they may be able to perform important roles in the everyday activities of local communities.
The present paper is mainly concerned with the analysis of the recent trend of aged returning and its backgrounds. It was found from a preliminary study that the aged returning is a phenomenon promoted by the increase in part-time farming and also by the ageing of farming populations and the fanning labour force. This leads the authors to estimate that: (1) the number of aged returnees will rise in future; (2) their distribution will accompany local differentials as it has so far.
To follow this, forty-seven prefectures were classified into five typologies based on the recent trend, and Oita and Iwate prefectures were chosen for further investigation: the former having a long-established experience in aged returning, and the latter showing signs of an increase. The results show that: (1) most aged returnees leave their outside-work at the age of retirement and a high proportion of those who settle in the community engage in fanning This indicates that they present high po-tential for playing important roles in community activities; (2) the availability of employment oppor-tunities outside farming affects the numbers of aged returning, which is the cause for local differentials in its distribution.

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This report intends to make clear the characteristics of improvement policy and the development course in planning.
Main results of the survey are as follows:
1. The authorities do not provide guidelines for the planning of villages but plan each village separately on a case by case basis, because the land is vast and there are different characteristics in each community in China.
2. The planning is by the people and the improvement is carried out according to the economic capacity of the group to which they belong.
3. The planning is divided into two stages, a basic, overall plan and a more detailed version which shows the definite contents of the plan.
4. There has been a change from complete to more limited reconstruction; on the other hand, the improvement of the environment has come to be considered important.
5. Because of the introduction of a productive duty system and the growth of industry in agricultural areas, there is an increased demand for the expansion of productive space, so often the improvement plan must be reviewed.

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